I'm sure you're all shocked... SHOCKED.
(Tip 'o the Enegry Dome to the skippys)
Boy, that didn't take long.
Oh, you negative liberals! (Much finger wagging)
Mimus Pauly over at skippy the bush kangaroo has a little survey going on that I quite like. It all began with being annoyed by that wanker Bernard Goldberg, so I'm getting all kinds of fuzzy feelings from it.
but i got to thinking about the title of his new book, and i wondered: instead of harping on who is (allegedly) screwing up america, why not try identifying those who made america great? so, as of today, i'm conducting a survey: who are the 100 greatest americans of all time?
Head on over to read the "rules," and chime in. The suggestions in comments are really interesting.
(We can cross-post if we want to, we can leave your friends behind...)
“If You Like Me, Check This Box!”
"You are the best governor ever - deserving of great respect!" [Miers] wrote in 1997, in a belated birthday note that was typical of the tone she used in her correspondence with then-Gov. Bush.The best brush-clearin’ govner with scat for brains.
[…]
Bush responded to her birthday wish in kind, and included a humorous, if baffling, postscript.
"I appreciate your friendship and candor. Never hold back your sage advice," he wrote. "P.S. No more public scatology." Whether Bush was referring to Miers' rough-and-tumble time as chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission or something else isn't clear. Scatology refers to "the study of or preoccupation with excrement or obscenity," according to Webster's dictionary.
[…]
Indeed, Miers oozes with deference and awe in her letters to Bush. In a 1995 note, she thanked Bush for a visit and called a ride in a plane with him "Cool!" When she wrote Bush a thank-you note for meeting with a lottery job applicant in 1997, she wrote, "You are the best!"
I’ve always thought that the particular brand of cronyism practiced by the Bush administration (you know—the kind where the big dog’s buddies are put in charge of FEMA, rather than just given the ambassadorship to Luxembourg, which is a sort of harmless kind of cronyism that all big dogs play) is a lot like middle school—stranded between childhood friendships and the beginnings of adult friendships. It’s a time where one starts to understand loyalty, but a kind of adolescent version of it, where the girl who always says you look good is deemed more loyal than the one who will tell you honestly if you look ridiculous, and the boy who’s always up for a game of touch football is the better friend than the one who’s willing to stay in and help you study for the big science test. It’s a time when “I didn’t do it!” is a common refrain, when you can sell your friend down the river to save your own ass (or be sold by a friend), but be Best Friends Forever again the next day. It’s a time before many kids fully understand what the difference is between a fun friend and a good friend; it’s usually only by sheer luck you can find someone who’s both at that age.
The Bush administration seems stuck in middle school—a group of kids who aren’t well-liked, but have parents with clout, so they can get away with a lot of shit. They’re popular only because they are bullies, and the younger kids look up to them for fear of doing anything less. They make fun of the smart kids, and don’t pay much attention in class.
The teachers might think they’re taking notes, but they’re really just writing notes to pass each other in the hallway between classes.
“I can’t wait to get out of here!”
“If you like me, check this box!”
Oh, Wingnuttia—How I Love Your Counter Culture Flair!
Pam’s got up another doozy of a post on the wingnuts’ answer to the insidious evil that is Harry Potter, which reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to post now that Halloween’s almost here…
Last Halloween, my nephew came back from Trick-or-Treating with two books in his bag o’ goodies, which my sister was appalled to discover (and removed from his sight before he read them). When she showed them to me, I begged her to let me have them, and she kindly agreed, looking at me like I was insane for wanting them, but they were simply too crazy for the rubbish bin. Apparently, some of their neighbors felt that kids didn’t need candy so much as a lesson on Christianity and Evil in the form of a demented little hardback comic book. I can’t even imagine how many of these things were handed out to unsuspecting kids.
You’ll have to forgive the quality of the images; I took photos of the pages, because I don’t have a flat scanner and didn’t want to destroy the books to share them. This is the first of the two, and I’ll put up the other one soon, if everyone enjoys this one. (Not all the pages have been posted, but you’ll get the gist.)
A Storybook for Kids
Warrant
Carman (not to be confused with the pernicious Cartman of South Park fame) enters the saloon and makes plain his plan…
Satan and his gang of wicked henchmonsters (identified in the book as his “unholy herd”) are having none of Carman's B.S.
Cartman knows the only way to deal with evildoers is to…
…beat the shit out of them!
Carman, who announces he represents “a whole new breed of Christian today,” knows that a good, old-fashioned ass-whuppin’ won’t take care of the devil himself, so he pulls out his gun…
…and his bullets…
…and blows the devil clean away!
The End.
But this little tale of Christian murder and mayhem does come with a warning for the kiddies…
That’s right. Guns are dangerous, but they have no power in the spirit realm. So you should only use them to kill heretics, not the devil.
Happy Halloween!
Hmm...
Anyone who knows anything about aviation want to help explain this?
(I don't mean for that to sound tinfoil hattish; like Idyllopus, I'm just curious.)
Oh, You Have GOT to be Kidding Me
The Dem establishment is trying to pressure Iraq War Veteran Paul Hackett to withdraw his Senate bid in Ohio:
An advisor to Democratic candidate Paul Hackett says the Iraq war veteran is being pressured to drop out of Ohio’s US Senate Race. Mike Brautigam says after Congressman Sherrod Brown announced last week he would run for Mike Dewine’s seat, Hackett started getting phone calls pressuring him to get out. Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Charles Schumer of New York to drop out of the race. Brautigam says Brown had told Hackett earlier he would not be a candidate and Hackett now feels betrayed by the Democratic party. Brautigam says the Democratic leaders say it’s Brown’s turn to run. He says Hackett is still making up his mind about what to do and expects to make a decision by October 24th, the day he had planned to officially enter the race. Hackett narrowly lost to Jean Schmidt in a special election to fill the seat left vacant when Rob Portman took a position in the Bush Administration.First of all, bad politics. This guy is well-liked, well-spoken, personable, good-looking, and can hit the GOP where they live—in the war zone for chickenhawks. He clearly touches a nerve with voters, having almost won a congressional seat in an Ohio district that is a Republican stronghold.
Secondly, what’s this shit about whose “turn” it is to run? That’s an old guard GOP mindset, which led them to run the likes of Bob Dole, because he’d put in his time and the top of the ticket was his due. That’s exactly the kind of entrenched traditionalism we don’t need right now from the Democrats, at a time when new ideas and new faces are what the party needs more than anything. Schumer ought to be ashamed of himself.
And Hackett ought to run. If the Democrats don’t want him, I’m sure the Greens would be happy to help him out.
(Hat tip AMERICAblog.)
Healthcare: Kind of a Crapshoot
Via Brad Plumer at Mojo Blog, a great post by Drum on why we need nationalized healthcare. And here and here are two of many comments on his thread that reinforce the point that it’s not only the poor who would benefit from it.
I can’t reiterate enough that the apocryphal stories about nationalized healthcare in Canada and Europe should not deter us. I’ve been in NHS facilities in Britain, and the quality of the care and service are as good as they are here. That said, my Londoner has had occasion in the past year to experience some of the limitations of the NHS, which we have discussed at length, and one of the major problems seems to be a shortage of facilities. This is, in no small part, due to the logistical problems of people to land mass ratio on a small island with green belt building restrictions. We must recognize that America has no shortage of land, and no shortage of medical facilities as it is, which positions us completely differently than some of the countries who have gone this way before us.
That’s not the NHS’ only problem, and I don’t mean to suggest that it is. But before succumbing to the warnings about nationalized healthcare with which we have been brainwashed since birth, I encourage you to consider that the American situation is, before the process even begins, fundamentally different than many of the countries from which such tales come.
As a side note, Mr. Shakes, who has had good health insurance coverage since coming to the States, has noted he would exchange in a New York minute the NHS for the constant worry about keeping coverage and the wrangling with insurance companies to make sure claims are paid.
Looters in Pakistan
Looting Breaks Out in Wake of Deadly Quake
I guess some of the buses carrying NOLA evacuees must have ended up in Muzaffarabad, because everyone knows that it’s only wild-eyed negroes who do that sort of thing.
Oh—this just in. Turns out the people in Pakistan are, like, starving and stuff after a natural disaster and delayed relief efforts. Huh. Maybe the people trapped in New Orleans after Katrina were just doing whatever they needed to survive. Gee.
Ahem.
Mon Frère Colbert
I’m looking forward to The Colbert Report with what can only be described as unhealthy anticipation. Mr. Shakes and I aren’t big TV watchers; the only shows we watch with any regularity are Rome, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and The Daily Show, our ardor for all three apparently having escaped the attention of the network executives charged with their fates, since they are still on the air, unlike every other show I’ve ever liked which has promptly been cancelled (see: Freaks and Geeks). So it’s a pretty big deal in our house when there’s a show we’re actually looking forward to.
Howard Kurtz has a good write-up of the show, and its namesake, in today’s WaPo. (One more reason to appreciate Colbert—he was the voice of Ace in one of my favorite Robert Smigel creations, The Adventures of Ace and Gary: The Ambiguously Gay Duo.)
It’s the not-funny stuff that was most interesting, however—the stuff that has made The Daily Show a good news source, even in spite of its dependable hilarity. The article starts with a quote from Colbert:
"The most common thing that real reporters say to me is, 'I wish I could say what you say.' What I don't understand is, why can't they say what I say, even in their own way? . . . Does that mean they want to be able to name certain bald contradictions or hypocrisies that politicians have?"Then later, this:
When Colbert talks about skewering hypocrites, he makes clear that, like Stewart, he cares about politics as more than a punch line. He recalls Vice President Cheney, in a CNBC interview last year, being asked about having said it was "pretty well confirmed" that terrorist Mohammed Atta had met with an Iraqi official in Prague -- part of a White House attempt to demonstrate a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Cheney denied making the comment, but "The Daily Show" later aired a tape of a 2001 "Meet the Press" interview in which the vice president had said the Atta meeting was "pretty well confirmed."Frustratingly, he’s probably right—although the who of the accusers is an interesting question. When Anderson Cooper, Shepherd Smith, and others went apeshit on air during the aftermath of Katrina, they were largely praised by the viewing audience. Reporters routinely say they don’t face pressure from within to cast stories in a particular light, but they’re clearly getting it from somewhere. That is, as they say, however, a whole other post.
"When Dick Cheney says, 'I never said that,' and then we play the tape, why did we do it?" Colbert says. "Why wasn't it done broadly? Because he wasn't speaking about something inconsequential. It wasn't like we were playing gotcha journalism over some quibble. It was over weapons of mass destruction. That's not advocacy journalism. That's objectivity in its most raw form."
So why don't more working journalists do what Stewart and Colbert are doing? Perhaps, Colbert says, "there's a sense that if they engaged in what we do at 'The Daily Show,' they'd be accused of being too aggressive."
In any case, I’m eagerly looking forward to The Colbert Report. There can’t be enough “skewering” of the news by offering “objectivity in its most raw form” as far as I’m concerned. Bring it on, Colbert.
I Adore Gore (Part Eight Zillion in an Ongoing Series)
By now, hopefully everyone is familiar with Gore’s recent firebrand speech, bemoaning the current state of America and the media, and reminding us, with allusions like “The German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, describes what has happened as ‘the refeudalization of the public sphere,’” that once upon a time, there were intelligent, thoughtful, interesting people at the helm of this country. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s here.
I know I go on about Gore a lot, but it remains one of my greatest disappointments that he was never my president. What everyone else sees in him now as they comment “Where was this Al Gore in 2000?” I have always seen. We bore witness to one of the great scam jobs of the new media in 2000—Gore was no more the robotic bore he was made out to be than Bush was the good ol’ boy Everyman that he was made out to be. We were hoodwinked, swindled—not just in Florida, not just by the Supreme Court in their unctuous decision to appoint Bush as president, but by the media, throughout the course of the campaign. This is who Al Gore is, and who he has always been.
So it with not a small amount of excitement that I read he may well be considering another run after all.
Despite the previous denials we've reported, Washington Whispers has talked to friends of Al Gore who still think "the former veep will be the next president."I think a Gore-Obama ticket would be great, although I’d like a Gore-Edwards ticket even better. At this point, I’d settle just for having Gore in the primaries, which I wholly believe would elevate all the candidates to a level more befitting the passion we expect them to have.
One political strategist and fundraiser "is opening a bid to get Gore into the race. Gore friends see his recent political and business moves as proof he's preparing to run. Allies say that in speeches, Gore has found his voice to address domestic and world issues. And in raising money for his Current TV network, which targets the critical youth market, Big Al has built an issue base and donor network that's competitive with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's. Our source -- a top aide in the previous Bush administration -- is planning meetings with Gore's team to push an early entry while Clinton runs for re-election in New York. It doesn't end there: The Gorebots want him to pick Sen. Barack Obama, the youthful Illinois African-American, as his No. 2."
Pepper Posse
Two of my favorite bloggrrls, Pepper of Daily Pepper and Catherine of Poverty Barn—and a third with whom I’m only now becoming familiar, Pell-Mell—have joined forces and become a Pepper Posse. As of today, the Daily Pepper has become a group blog…with a new look, to boot. Stop on by and say hi!
Right On
Avedon Carol has a brilliant post on the trouble with “moderate” Dems. I’m not even going to try to excerpt it—just go read the whole thing.
And I will reiterate my assertion that any study which focuses exclusively on voter data is all but useless insofar as understanding those who don't vote is probably just as important, if not more so, than trying to appeal to those who already do.
Heh
Mustang Bobby on conservative disenchantment:
…it's not just the Miers pick; things have been snowballing since the beginning of the summer with Iraq getting worse, the investigation into the Plame case heating up, the indictment of Tom DeLay, the hurricanes...it's just getting to be too much even for the Kool-Aid Kids who think that when George Bush farts they're hearing the Oracle of Delphi.Read the rest here.
More Rovian Shenanigans
Salon is reporting that Turd Blossom might have more legal troubles, this time in Texas, where he is apparently registered to vote, even though he doesn’t live there. A lawyer for the Texas secretary of state’s office, Elizabeth Reyes, was quoted in a WaPo article as saying that a person who votes in a place he doesn’t live opens himself up to criminal prosecution. Apparently, lawyers who simply state the law, anywhere in the vicinity of a discussion of Rove’s dirty hijinks, opens herself up to persecution; after receiving a call from said scumbag, the Texas secretary of state fired Reyes.
I truly find it difficult to believe that there are any Americans left who believe George Bush or any of his cronies are honorable people. That this kind of punitive action is taken against anyone who even remotely challenges any member of the administration is demonstrative of a contempt for the law and for any semblance of ethics, the likes of which we have not seen before in this country—they are even worse than Nixon and his band of slimy yokels. (In fact, many of them are the same slimy yokels, with years of petulant misanthropy directing them to ever greater heights of sliminess.)
These guys have got to go. Every day brings new reasons. They’re corrupt to the core, and they ought to be run out of town with the equivalent amount of disgrace as the much ballyhooed integrity with which they supposed rode in.
Support the Arts
Christopher Goodwin is a DC-area artist who’s raffling off one of his pieces, Rime (which I happen to like quite a bit, myself—hence the post). Normally, it would sell for $550, but you can buy a raffle ticket for $7 for a chance to win Rime—or a second place prize of one of his prints. Chris says:
Just 6 more days to buy a raffle ticket for a great painting. I need to sell 30 more tickets or the raffle gets cancelled, which would be an ignominious defeat. Details below.You can buy tickets via Pay Pal by clicking the link at the end of the post. If you want to buy more than one ticket, just change the amount from $7.00 to whatever multiple you want. (If enough tickets aren’t sold, and the raffle has to be cancelled, your money will be refunded.) If the winner is in the DC area, Chris will arrange a drop-off/pick-up; if outside DC, he'll arrange insured shipping via FedEx or UPS.
Raffles are nothing new, of course, but I've never had one. And I'm always seeking new ways of getting my art out of the studio and into the world.
So, for buying a $7.00 raffle ticket, you might win a painting that costs $550. Or, because I'll have a second prize, you might at least win a print of my choice. The drawing will be on Saturday, October 15, at noon sharp.
[Rime is] one of my "interstitial" paintings, measures 20 inches square, and is acrylic on canvas. It's a gallery-wrap canvas with staple-free sides that are painted black. It needs no framing.
For each raffle ticket sold (and participants may buy as many tickets as they like), I will place the buyer's contact info on a 4"x4" slip of paper, crumple it into a ball, and drop it into a box. At noon on October 15, I will have a completely disinterested person I do not know pull the winning ticket from the box (I will ask a random passerby outside Capitol Hill's Eastern Market Metro station to do the honors).
The deadline for buying a ticket is October 14th, so if you’re interested…make sure you get a ticket soon. It’s only seven bucks!
You can see more of Chris’ artwork here.
Go %20&amount=0&item_name=raffleTicket" target=_blank>here to buy a ticket. (I know that link looks weird; it's got a character in it Blogger doesn't like, but it takes you to the right place.)
Something’s Missing
Ezra’s post, The Politics of Mobilization, and Nicholas’ post, The Mostly Unfuzzy Math of William Galston & Elaine Kamarck, each refer to studies that make recommendations to the Democrats based on voter data. What strikes me in both cases is that the pictures drawn are incomplete. The current electorate is not the same as the potential electorate, and ignoring the possibilities to extend the Democratic base within the latter seems to be a rather glaring omission. Cernig from Newshog recently noted:
By American standards the turnout for the 2004 Presidential election was high—yet by the standards of other Western democracies it was woefully low. Chris Bowers at MyDD recently researched who didn't turn out to vote and came up with some interesting findings. In 2004, for example, the national median income was $35,100 p.a. yet the median income of the electorate was $55,300—a difference of 57.5%.In moving rightward, the Democrats have abandoned a part of their traditional base—the working class and the poor, many of whom also face voter disenfranchisement on election day in addition to the political marginalization they experience on a regular basis. Difficulty voting, compounded by a lack of opportunity to vote for a party who passionately champions their issues has left an entire swath of potential voters feeling disencouraged from voting. One doesn’t have to be particularly politically savvy to understand the difference between actively pursuing policy from which they will benefit and disingenuous lip service during an election cycle.
In other words, it is mostly the poorest segment of society who don't vote. Consider that although Bush gained 52% of the electorate, he only got 34% of all the possible votes. That means there is a huge potential constituency out there, between 25% and 30% of the potential electorate, who simply don't vote—and they don't vote simply because neither Republicans nor Republican-Lites have policies that address their concerns!
There are things that can be done to help everyone vote—making election day a holiday, fair elections without 9 hour wait times to cast a ballot, etc. But beyond the functionality of making voting easier, they’ve got to be offered a reason to make the trip out the door in the first place.
It’s easy to dismiss this line of reasoning with the old “there’s obviously a difference between the Democrats and the Republicans” line, as if that ought to be enough, and for many of us, that difference is apparent. But I have worked with the truly indigent—not the working poor, but families who have been homeless (or are homeless), or have languished generation after generation in the projects—and the differences we may see between the Democrats and the Republicans do not help them. Neither party effectively addresses their needs. They didn’t “do better” under Clinton than Bush. They couldn’t care less about gay marriage, or which candidate is more churchy. They want someone who can help them, who can help their kids, who cares about a school with ancient books and no heat. No Child Left Behind didn’t make their schools worse—they were already as bad as they could get. In a town the county over from mine, the schools are in such disarray, they have lost accreditation from the state. Hands up in the air—oh well; we’re not giving you any more money until you can get your act together. This happened while Clinton was in office, and the state had a Democratic governor. It has not changed under Bush, nor under the new Republican governor.
What’s the difference between the parties in the eyes of those students, their parents?
When John Edwards talked about the Two Americas, he was talking about poverty and opportunity and access, but he could just as well have been talking about the America that votes, and the America that doesn’t.
(Crossposted at Ezra's place.)
Goodbye, Jim
Sorry I haven't posted today. This morning, Mr. Shakes and I had to have Big Jim put to sleep. He was 11.
Shakers who have been around awhile have read about Jimmy before. I got him from a local animal shelter. There was a huge cage full of kittens right inside the front door, one more adorable than the next. One was all white except for a black tail. One was all black except for a little white moustache. Fourteen of them—thirteen of which mewed and pawed out through the bars of the cage for my attention, purring and doing their best to look cute. The other one, ugly as sin, all ears and completely pathetic, sat in the food dish, looking miserable. “I’ll take him,” I said. The animal shelter volunteer looked at me like I was nuts. “The one in the food dish?” I nodded. “Yep.” She gave me a look that tells me they probably still tell the tale of the girl who adopted the antisocial food dish cat a decade later. My rationale was that all the others were so cute, they’d be adopted in no time. But who would take the ugly little sod who made no attempt at affection? He was definitely the one.
Jimmy was later diagnosed with epilespsy, and much later, with diabetes. For years, we've been giving him two shots of insulin a day. Recently, he started to go downhill. He couldn't always make it to the litter box anymore. We pulled the carpet out of the office and covered the floor with plastic lining, so if he had an accident, it wouldn't matter. That worked for awhile, but in the last week, he stopped eating and got so weak he could barely walk. He dropped from 18 pounds to 13 in a matter of days. He couldn't clean himself anymore, so I brushed him and cleaned him with a damp rag, which he enjoyed, flicking his tail and thumping it against me in the way he always had to let me know he was happy.
He was a great cat, and in spite of all his troubles, he never fussed and never complained, and was always in a good mood. My heart is just breaking thinking about not seeing him anymore; I really loved the little bugger more than I can say.
I'm going to miss our boy. Goodbye, Jimmy.
From the Mailbag
I thought I ought to post this, since it applies to all you filthy Shakers, too.
I enjoy reading many blogs each day. If I could get past the filthy language you use in your posts, I might find that you actually have something interesting to say. The foul language only detracts from the content of your posts. Why do you feel that it's necessary to be a garbage mouth? You're certainly no lady. You come off as a tough, young broad. Maybe you're proud of that. I don't know. It's obvious that your readers are the same type of people, judging from their comments. Who in their right mind uses words like "cocksucker" and “cunt" in conversation? Nobody I care to associate with.Dear Correspondent,
Most of the other bloggers in your blogging circle manage to get across their ideas in a respectable manner. If you were my daughter, I'd have washed your mouth out with soap many years ago.
Clean up your act Sister.
When the Bush administration stops being totally obscene, so will I. For further information, please see the last two paragraphs of this post.
Best regards,
Shakespeare’s Sister
P.S. I love the taste of soap.
“Shame! Shame!”
That’s what the Democrats were chanting in the House today as the GOP held open the vote on another scheissty energy bill for 40 minutes until they had strong-armed enough support for it to pass. BradBlog’s got the video. Unbelievable.
Son of Uncle Sam
The Heretik has more on the divine messages of which the president has claimed to be in receipt. I continue to stand by my original assertion that our fair leader is dyslexic and suffering the same delusions as the infamous receiver of mysterious messages David Berkowitz. Arf.
Question of the Day: What other messages do you think the president may have received from Barney?
Here's one possibility.
